I found Malakai standing at the edge of a rooftop garden three days after the massacre at the Archives, staring up at the sky. Above us, the seven moons hung in their normal celestial dance corrupted into chaos. Solaris, the youngest, burned fiercely, casting a golden pall over the city. Umbris, the dark moon, was encircled by an unnatural corona, its edges devouring light like a voracious void.
Malakai seemed small against the chaotic beauty of the heavens. His shoulders sagged under invisible weights, his once pristine robes crumpled and stained as if they'd borne the burden of countless sleepless nights. The biting wind carried the scent of iron and burning stars, stinging my face as I approached.
"You look awful," I said, no more than a few paces away from him. That wasn't an observation; it was fact. His pale skin and sunken eyes told a story of torment I wouldn't be able to fathom, let alone imagine.
"Good evening, Sera," he replied in a hoarse, cracked voice. "The Council sent you, didn't they?"
"They think you've lost your mind," I said, pulling my cloak tighter against the chill. The air atop the Inverse Spires was sharp and thin, every breath a reminder of our altitude. "They say you're ranting about Old Ones walking among us, about reality itself unraveling. And about Elara." I hesitated, unwilling to voice the rest.
He turned to me with slow, deliberate motions, as if even that much exertion weighed on him. His eyes caught the light of Solaris, and I almost pulled away. Silver tendrils of light flickered within his irises, jagged and restive, like miniature storms.
"And what do you think?" he asked softly.
I hesitated, memories of our shared apprenticeship surfacing unbidden. Malakai had been my closest ally then, a steadfast companion in the intricate and arcane arts of Starweaving. He and his brothers—
No. I couldn't allow myself to dwell on Elara. Not now.
"I think," I said carefully, "that you wouldn't be standing here if you didn't have a good reason."
He nodded as if my words offered some faint solace. Then, with the air of one resigned to inevitability, he drew back his sleeve. What lay beneath took my breath away in a hitch. Silvery veins coursed up his forearm in intricate patterns out of this world; every line pulsed faintly to his heartbeat. Mesmerizing, and at the same time so utterly unsettling.
"The Key is changing me," he said with a tone bordering on conversational. "Just as the Keeper warned."
Everyone knew of the Key of Unmaking. Since what happened at the Archives, the artifact was becoming as notorious as any plague or virus which had swept through the City, passing lips in hushed whispers. They said Malakai got it from the elusive Keeper of Broken Things, and that it could mend the fractures between worlds. Banish the Old Ones. Save Elara—if there was anything of him left to save anymore.
But the cost.
"Show me," I said.
He did, his arm stretching out, the markings flaring whiter for an instant. The frost-like markings appeared to live, shifting minutely under his skin. If one stared at them too long, the result was a headache-a sense that the patterns tried to rewrite the very fabric of reality.
"It's not just my body," he muttered. "My mind's slipping too. The walls between what is and what could be. so thin now. Sometimes, I think I can almost hear them creaking under the weight from the other side of what's pressing against them.
A shiver ran down my spine, and had little to do with the cold wind. It was as if the air was heavier, thick with a presence unseen. Above us, the moons shifted once more, their movements frantic and calculated at the same time. Solaris moved in closer to Lunara, their lights twisting together in a ghostly, macabre dance.
"The Council needs to know," I started, but he cut me off with a sharp, mirthless laugh.
"The Council?" he spat. "Half of them are already compromised. Elara's knowledge is seeping, warping anyone who dares to study it. Haven't you noticed how Kaine's speeches echo? How his words seem to hang in the air, like something else is speaking through him?"
I had. We all had. But to say it aloud was to court catastrophe.
The wind howled, carrying upon it a haunting, distant melody. I looked up, my stomach twisting. The moons were coming into conjunction in some configuration I did not know, their combined lights casting unnatural shadows around me that seemed to twist and curl like living things.
"It's starting," Malakai whispered, his voice full of reverence.
The world around us held its breath. Far beneath, the city stirred uneasily, its heartbeat synchronize with the chaotic rhythm of the heavens. I clutched the edges of my cloak tighter, realizing too late that no fabric could shield me from the darkness we were to face.